The Conversion Solution sends sales teams relevant and actionable alerts and insights across multiple channels in real time when one of their accounts is in the news, visiting their company's website, or demonstrating interest in their products.

"The Conversion Solution is designed specifically to increase sales activity for ABM programs to increase the ROI in marketing," he told CRM Buyer.

The Conversion Solution has "an easy-to-use UI, and implementation takes less than a week," Golec noted. "There is no learning curve, as insights are delivered in the channels sales teams already use."

Playing Well With Others

"It's not surprising that Demandbase has started with Sales Cloud and LinkedIn Navigator, given the market share and potential of Salesforce and Microsoft in sales force automation," said Rebecca Wettemann, VP of research at Nucleus Research.

Integration with other solutions is "in the works," Demandbase's Golec said. "Our ABM solutions integrate with all the major marketing clouds, including Adobe, Oracle, SAP and others."

The partner ecosystem could expand "to include other SFA platforms like the Oracle Sales Cloud, Microsoft Dynamics and the Infor Sales Cloud," suggested Cindy Zhou, principal analyst at Constellation Research.

Conversion Solution Benefits

Many Demandbase users already integrate the company's platform "in some way with their broader marketing and SFA technologies," she said. The Conversion Solution "will accelerate time to value and reduce ongoing integration management costs for those who take advantage of it."

It "will help with sales productivity by automating account prioritization and enabling sellers to have more meaningful engagements based on the prospect's areas of interest," Constellation's Zhou told CRM Buyer.

"ABM is a key strategy for B2B companies, which would benefit from the Conversion Solution," she said.

Leveraging AI

The Conversion Solution has an AI layer built in, which "is largely invisible to users, so marketers can focus on the results," Demandbase's Golec said.

"2017 was the year AI moved from concept to implementation, with real use cases in sales and marketing," Zhou said.

"AI is already revolutionizing marketing by helping marketers target the right audience with relevant offers based on their areas of interest," she noted. Adoption is "still in the early stages, but the productivity gains have been dramatic."

The Conversion Solution "will help with sales productivity by automating account prioritization and enabling sellers to have more meaningful engagements based on the prospect's areas of interest," Zhou added.

AI's Limitations

Having an AI capability is not a panacea; that capability must be used properly if its potential is to be realized.

Bringing more intelligence into the mix with AI "will accelerate the sales cycle and likely drive greater deal size when used effectively," Wettemann observed.

"AI is only as good as the data quality feeding those insights," Zhou pointed out. "This is a caveat for all ABM solutions."

Richard Adhikari has been an ECT News Network reporter since 2008. His areas of focus include cybersecurity, mobile technologies, CRM, databases, software development, mainframe and mid-range computing, and application development. He has written and edited for numerous publications, including Information Week and Computerworld. He is the author of two books on client/server technology.
Email Richard.